Posts Tagged ‘change’

Going through Nonni’s writings, I found this one from a couple of years ago. She was just journaling then, but I thought it was kind of appropriate, considering whats going on now, where even the idea of objective truth is being dismantled.

Recently I read a comment, I forget where, that our society is in its adolescence.I skimmed the article, and the point was that our society seems to want to question absolutely everything, tear down institutions and argue incessantly for the sake of arguing, without yet having any well thought-out alternatives.I would have to agree.It does seem, looking at history, that societies go through cycles.When a society is young, its focus is on growth, and much hard work goes on with building as well as increase in numbers.Such societies usually have some sense of what has gone before, and a strong identification with family, tribe and/or community.Some societies go into a rapid turmoil of change—I have read that often these societies have large numbers of young adults compared to the other segments of the population.These societies have all the characteristics of the adolescent society described above.An adolescent society may end this phase in several ways: 1) war, because weakness results, making them prey to attack; 2) revolution or civil war, because the destruction of society’s institutions causes instability; 3) a repressive government steps in to stop the chaos or 4) if it goes only far enough to scare people, and not too far, the societal institutions may re-establish themselves, albeit perhaps in a modified form.Some societies don’t survive their adolescence, break up and are absorbed by other societies.Some societies eventually evolve into constitutional democracies, and their institutions have the cooperation of the populace, yet these too, may again enter the adolescent phase and the cycle repeats itself.In short, we can’t assume a stable nation with a stable democracy will always be that way, and that destruction of institutions is always without cost or danger.